Stop, Look, and Listen #4
A round-up of what I have been reading and listening to this past week.
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This post is part of the newsletter’s ‘Stop, Look, and Listen’ series, a digest of articles and podcasts (and occasionally programmes and films) that I’ve found engaging and insightful over the past week. I also maintain a regular record of all these via Substack’s ‘Notes’ feature; you can also read these via the Notes section of my site.
Nationalism, colonialism, and ethnic conflict
The number of Palestinians killed in Gaza continues to rise and Western leaders’ unconditional support for Israel looks ever more badly judged. For analysis of the motives of and likely future actions of the different actors involved, I would recommend giving a listen to:
Tareq Baconi, president of the board of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, talking about Hamas, its history, objectives, and strategy, on The Dig podcast.
Dalia Dassa Kaye, speaking with Marc Leon Goldberg on Global Dispatches podcast, about the multiple disincentives against Israel, Hezbollah, or Iran escalating hostilities in a manner that could spark a regional war, but also the very real risks that such a conflagration could nonetheless occur.
There has been much discussion about the value of a decolonial lens for understanding the conflict, often disingenuously and sometimes overly schematically. My personal inkling is that Western liberals find the issue of Israel and Palestine so thorny in part because it highlights the lack of a break between the colonial and the national. Questioning whether Israel, in its current guise, is a project of oppression rather than liberation challenges their assumption that the nation state itself, safely contained within an institutionalised international order, is the logical, territorial, bordered, fully sovereign embodiment of self-determination, rather than inevitably just another tool of domination.
In such a context, historical analysis can challenge presentist readings of regional and global affairs, troubling that which appears overly neat, explaining that which seems too messy. It helps trace the trajectories by which nation states have emerged as heirs to imperial projects, and identify the interests groups driving this process and the groups forcefully dispossessed by it. For example, on this episode of the History Ex podcast, hosted by Erika Monahan, Philip J. Stern and Quinn Slobodian discussed their work on the role of early modern corporations in building empire, and of 20th-century free market radicals in imagining a world without the nation state, respectively. Their dialogue opened up many continuities in the histories of both capitalism and imperialism, and the way those advancing the interests of capital used historical narratives for that purpose. The intersection between capitalism, colonialism, and nation-building, and its implications for relationships between racialised groups, is the key theme, within a specifically American context, of James V. Fenelon’s book Indian, Black and Irish: Indigenous Nations, African Peoples, European Invasions, 1492–1790, which he discussed with Aidan Beatty on New Books in Irish Studies.
One instance of ethnic conflict and cleansing that has attracted far less global attention than Gaza is the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh. An historically predominantly ethnically Armenian exclave located within neighbouring Azerbaijan, it has been contested between Armenia and Azerbaijan since they both emerged as independent states from the break-up of the Soviet Union at the start of the 1990s. After several months of blockade, Azerbaijani forces made an incursion into the territory earlier this autumn that resulted in the exodus of almost that entire Armenian population. On The Eurasian Knot podcast, host Sean Guillory interviewed political theorist Rafael Khachaturian and historian Richard Antaramian about the situation, situating it within both its historical and geopolitical contexts, and explaining why its particular dynamics both confound its easy framing within conventional media narratives, and discourage effective external intervention.
Indonesia has also functioned as heir to the imperial project of its own former coloniser, its Java-centred new government asserting its authority over the ethnically diverse island territories of the former Dutch East Indies after the end of the Second World War. Writing for Jacobin, Douglas Gerrard explores the ongoing legacies of this history in West Papua, in the form of political repression, military violence, extractive industries displacing traditional economic activity, and state-encouraged Javanese settler colonialism.
Antisemitism, antiracism, and solidarity
The emotional fallout of the October 7th Hamas attack and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza, for Jews and Palestinians both in Israel and Palestine and in the diaspora, was I thought very movingly captured in this discussion on the The Fire These Times podcast, chaired by Daniel Voskoboynik, between Joey Ayoub, Dana El-Kurd, Orly Noy, and Yair Wallach. Despite the sense of despair and isolation the participants understandably voiced, their conversation is nonetheless I think a real reminder of the radical possibilities of politics rooted in kindness, compassion, and empathy, even in the face of seemingly intractable societal divisions.
Crude equation by bad faith actors of support for Palestinian liberation with pro-Hamas or antisemitic sentiment ought not to be, but often is, used to dismiss concerns expressed by some Jewish people about rising antisemitism generally and related to pro-Palestinian activism specifically. I posted a note arguing why that fear ought to be taken seriously and into consideration in order to build a politics of solidarity between minoritised peoples, rather than of communitarianism exploited for purposes of White supremacy:
I admire the clarity and proportion many Jewish writers have expressed about the situation, including in this open letter by American Jewish writers, published in n+1 magazine, rejecting the conflation of criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza with antisemitism as a pretext for silencing this criticism within Western countries, and this post by Joshua P. Hill for his New Means newsletter, taking the rise in antisemitism seriously but refuting the idea that it is comparable either to the Holocaust or the bombardment of Gaza. I was especially touched, however, by this piece by Emily Tamkin for Slate magazine, asserting the legitimacy of Jewish feelings of pain and discomfort, but also the importance of turning outwards from that, both to embrace Palestinians and Muslims experiencing similar emotions, and to refuse to allow one’s identity to be defined solely in terms of the hatred others may hold for it.
I found it productive to consider this topic in relation to the complex situations facing other minority groups who likewise hold relative privilege in some regards and remain marginalised in others, aided by two excellent interviews aired on New Books Network last week. Firstly, in dialogue with Dave O’Brien, Simone Varriale discussed his new book Coloniality and Meritocracy in Unequal EU migrations: Intersecting Inequalities in Post-2008 Italian Migration, and the way ideas of meritocracy and stereotypes about Northern and Southern Europe shape Italian migrants to the UK’s sense of identity and of personal trajectory.
Secondly, interviewed by Susan Liebell, Claire Jean Kim discussed her new book Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World, and the way the historical and contemporary experiences of migrants from Asia to the US, and their descendants, has been shaped by the forces of White supremacism and anti-Blackness, which degrade and elevate their status respectively. Liebell’s and Kim’s dialogue is particularly valuable for the questions both raises as to how marginalised groups can recognise differences in their experiences, even relative privileges they hold, and use that as a basis for rather than barrier to effective solidarity.
Democratic backsliding, across the globe
In the US, the election of Republican Mike Johnson as Speaker for the House of Representatives has offered a window into the mainstreaming of the far right. Writing for his Democracy Americana newsletter, Thomas Zimmer pushed back against the sanitising media narratives that help to legitimise the most extreme positions of the contemporary American right, focusing on a recent soft-pedalling around just what Johnson’s advocacy of ‘faith and family’ means. For his Campaign Trails newsletter, Kevin M. Kruse explored the American right’s efforts to institutionalise Christianity in American life, and how their manipulation of history in order to legitimise this project is in tension with the protections of freedom of religion embedded in the US constitution.
In Israel, the state of conflict with Hamas has enabled the chaotic coalition led by Likud to adopt more repressive measures against dissenting voices. Writing for Jacobin, Yona Roseman warned of the declining space for left-wing Israelis to protest against the persecution of Palestinians, amid persecution by the state, as well as supposedly independent institutions and the grassroots far right. In +972 Magazine, Oren Persico laid out the thus far frustrated efforts of the Israeli state to curb the broadcasting freedoms of the Qatari Al Jazeera media network within the country.
The thinness of the barriers between far right actors and instruments of government is a frightening global phenomenon. The Republicans and Likud are both members of the International Democracy Union, as are the Conservatives here in the UK. An originally centre-right alliance of parties, which now also includes unabashedly authoritarian radical right parties such as BJP in India and Fidesz in Hungary. The organisation and the implications of Conservative membership of it are explored by Peter Geoghegan in this post for his Democracy for Sale newsletter.
Transnational intellectual histories
I also listened to three excellent podcast episodes this week, concerned with histories of the transnational intellectual lives of groups facing subjugation:
Interviewed by Amber Nickell on the New Books Network’s Jewish Studies channel, Marat Grinberg discussed his book The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf: Jewish Culture and Identity Between the Lines, and the vital role that literature and reading played for Soviet Jews and their cultivation and maintenance of a sense of identity in the face of state repression and popular antisemitism.
On the Strictly Facts podcast, Deanna Lyncook was interviewed by Alexandria Miller on her research into schooling in the Caribbean and children of Caribbean migrants’ experiences within the British education system, discussing the racial inequality and discrimination underpinning both, and efforts made by parents and teachers to overcome them.
Interviewed by Ari Barbalat, Paschalis Kitromilides spoke about his book Insular Destinies: Perspectives on the History and Politics of Modern Cyprus, paying particular attention to the early modern history of the island under Ottoman rule, including the development of Cypriot literature, religious thought, and historical scholarship, both in Cyprus and among its expatriates.
Film and genre
And on a (mostly) lighter note, three podcast episodes to recommend on the theme of genre in cinema:
In the first episode of their new podcast on the romantic comedy, In Front of Ira, Sabrina Mittermeier and Torsten Kathke, discussed the 1989 film When Harry Met Sally, its significance to the genre as a whole in establishing many of its key tropes, and its relationship with Jewish traditions of comedy, among other aspects.
On their Unclear and Present Danger podcast about the political and action thrillers of the 1990s, Jamelle Bouie and John Ganz discussed the 1994 TV film The Enemy Within, using it to think through some broader questions about constitutionalism, political legitimacy, and attempted coups in the US.
On the Why Theory podcast, Todd McGowan and Ryan Engley discussed science fiction as a cinematic genre and its philosophical underpinnings – including, most importantly, its wrestling with the possibilities and threats posed by technological advancement – through films such as Metropolis, The Thing from another World, Forbidden Planet, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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